Wesley Ellis

A well-made little (4" X 6") volume printed on high quality paper, includes a few family-album style photos of no interest to the general public and a recipe for homemade sauerkraut (start with 65 pounds of cabbage). But the text is nothing more than a highly personal anecdote about the author's experience of Christmas away from home while he was teaching ESL in Slovakia, and found he could actually celebrate the birth of his Lord and attend midnight mass in a country where religious practices had been officially forbidden just a few years before. (Didn't he get any briefing on what it would be like before he went over there?) It could have made a nice letter home, or maybe a blog post. The Christmas Eve meal is described, and it was nothing special (sounds like what I would expect people in that part of the world to eat on any given Saturday night or Sunday) but nothing is said about any other local traditions; there is one poorly lighted photo of the triptych inside the church, and as I said, some pictures of his host family at the dinner table and in their living room. Not much here to recommend it.… (mehr)